Wednesday, September 06, 2006

Are you thinking what I'm thinking?

When I was 3 I told my mum that my gran had a stomach ache. My gran was healthy and living in a different town at the time. Much to my mum?s surprise, my gran mentioned she had a stomach ache in a telephone conversation later that day. Now this could be down to my acute telepathic prowess, but coincidence seems a better explanation.

Anyway, the experiment investigates whether it is possible to predict who is going to email you before they actually do. It was published in a minor journal called Perceptual and Motor Skills.

Each participant chose four friends as their pool of potential emailers. Then an experimenter selected one of these four people at random and asked them to email the participant at a fixed time. One minute before this time, the participant took a guess at who was about to email.

Sheldrake reports that 552 trials took place with 50 participants. If a correct guess was based on chance alone you would expect of course to see a 1 in 4, or 25%, success rate. The experiment actually produced a 47% hit rate, he says, and adds that the probability of this result occurring randomly is 1 in a billion.

Further email trials were conducted where the participants were filmed, to ensure that they were not receiving a tip-off from their emailer by text or instant messenger. The results of these experiments were similar to the previous trials, Sheldrake says.

So if the reported details are all correct, what is going on? I find it hard to believe in telepathy, but can't see a flaw that would explain such a high success rate. Can you? To be on the safe side, please add your opinion to the comments below, just in case sending your thoughts via telepathy doesn?t quite make it through.

Sheldrake?s own explanation for this phenomenon is pretty exotic, in my opinion. It is that members of social groups are linked through "morphic fields", which connect members together and provide channels of communication through which organisms can stay in touch over distance. Sheldrake explains, ?this is not paranormal, just an addition to the laws that we already accept".

Re your article "Are you thinking what I'm thinking?" I find it unbelievable that scientists seem so willing to scoff at the idea of telepathy, despite these studies showing some justification for the hypothesis. Just because something has not yet been proved beyond any reasonable doubt does not mean that it does not exist - centuries ago scientists scoffed at the idea that the world was spherical! Carrying out further experiments might prove or disprove the theory but scoffing at ideas is not very useful at all.

Professor Peter Atkins of Oxford University was quoted in the Independent newspaper describing the possibility of telepathy and the afterlife as a ?charlatan?s fantasy? - it is a pity that some eminent scientists seem all too willing to take this attitude to a subject which is seen by many to be valid just because they "don't believe in it" rather than opening up the subject to debate and further experimentation to prove it one way or another.

I didn't see any glaring flaws but I loved the sentence "In replications of this work, it would be important to test the vibrating cell phone hypothesis." If the results are independently validated (and I didn't miss something glaring) I don't see any reason not to explore it further.

Personally I don't think we should place any belief in either side of the story. There's no proof, but there's no way to disprove this as of yet. I've always been fond of philosophy and one particular analogy of how we are merely small birds. The bird doesn't know anything else other than to feed, breed, et cetera. Similarly, as humans we are actually limited to a certain point and beyond that there are things that we can't comprehend.

Personally, I wouldn't throw the idea of telepathy out of the window. Scientifically we all know there are things that we can't see, hear, smell, taste or feel that can have adverse side-effects on our physiology. So is telepathy really so hard to believe if that's the case? Perhaps our science can't detect certain things? Although I'm not a scientist so I can't make assumptions.

People develop social groups, associates they have spend varying amounts of time with. These are the social worlds most of us inhabit. We spend this time learning each other's speech, thought and mood patterns -- for instance, it's common for friends to finish each other's sentences. On a different level we learn the nuances of our friend's and families physical characteristics as well -- groups of women sometimes fall into a mutual menstrual cycle. As peers we consciously and unconsciously observe and learn many subtle characteristics of each other's personality and physiology.

As a result of these observations -- evolved patterns important for social animals -- people will sometimes unconsciously extrapolate their friend's and families conditions -- regarding health for instance -- as well as an awareness of a sort of peer conversation situation; you and a close friend may rarely go two or three weeks without speaking, emailing, etc. Three or four weeks have passed and you start to develop a nagging feeling that they are about to call or email, they do and you wonder how you knew that they would, when it is in reality a sophisticated pattern recognition talent our social species has developed. -- Peter Thelin

To the above post, while I agree with what you are saying, it seems to have little bearing on the results of this specific trial. Of the four people, one was chosen AT RANDOM to email the test subject. As such, I don't see how that could be attributed to the pattern recognition you speak of.

I think the following line might be relevant- "Then an experimenter selected one of these four people at random"

How did he do this exactly? I'd prefer to hear that the emailers were chosen by a dice roll/computer programme to rule out subconscious cues: for example, the experimenter and the subject could both be picking the most conspicuous looking emailer.

Telepathy, I don't think so, but can't rule out. I think a more sensible notion is that any of the people you know, are actually part of your psyche too. We exchange so much with people, and in essence they become part of who we are, so thinking alike is to be expected. a strangers psyche is passed on to my friend, then passed on to me, and suddenly I'm thinking like that stranger. Look up Archetype in wikipedia. makes sense to me. ;) see my web for fun whitestargazer .ca

What if the reason for this telepathic communication was yet to be discovered properties of DNA, acting as receiver/transmitter of consciousness. Some of you might have heard of the 100th monkey syndrome. David Icke writes about this. I guess it's based upon the same principle.

Testing, Testing, and Testing. I can?t emphasize how important it is to do further work on an idea. How motivated are we to find out the answer to the mystery? We all have beliefs but beliefs are meant to be tested. Hypotheses are formed and then we test them and after much testing we discover new things. All I can say is that we need to investigate further. I know I may be a hypocrite because I probably won't investigate this field myself but for those who are in the right place and are interested may discover new things. So here we are new discoveries to be made who will be the one to find the mystery.

Here is a hypothesis. There is much investigation into extra dimensions. Some how these dimensions may be connected to reality here but in a way we yet do not understand. Consider String Theory or other extra dimension theories. No one completely understands the mystery behind consciousness or ingrained morals yet (built in presumption of what is right and wrong). What if all these quantum mysteries we are unraveling today are linked to extra dimensions. What if Consciousness is some how related to extra dimensions as well and that is the medium which consciousness works through. Like the quantum properties of water. (Do a search, ?quantum, water, life? to learn about it). All life I think has water. So maybe people are connected some how in another dimension. Ok so now I have a hypothesis or idea. We could do tests to find how water affects consciousness and if the quantum realm has any affect on that. Next compare quantum realm in dimension theories. Depending on results and studies we may have something here or not. (Just an example). So it all starts from ideas and goes from there.

Whilst it is important not to discount anything, it is important to ensure that we know what we are looking for. One of the great things about science it that it refuses to attribute more than it should to a single piece of data. assuming the results are correct to call it telepathy is jumping the gun.

However questions to be asked include1) did the e-mailer send at the command of the observer or choose their own time? 2) what other, simpler, explanations could account for the result (simpler meaning not requiring a mysterious and undefinable method of communication for a start)

I don't find this particularly suprising. I find myself doing the same thing when I'm at work. I have a friend who works in a completely different building in a completely different part of the city, but i can confidently 'feel' when he's about to email me. I don't know how, and I don't know why, but there it is.

I note that no one has explained a basic problem with pretty much all paranormal experiments: No mechanism is first postulated and then tested for validity.

So some guy does an experiment and gets some results and then says it must be telepathy. Well that just isn't science is it? What you need to do is propose a mechanism for telepathy then produce an experiment that will test that mechanism. Otherwise you're reverse engineering some philosophy to fit the data. I've read a lot of psychic experiments but none of the ones that supposedly produce results starts with a theory on how it would work.

eg: Morphic fields are fields that intertwine and connect living beings allowing a sort of shart knowledge. So first we can try to test if they are a field. If they are a field there must be a transmission medium, a particle of some sort, like a photon or a psion (my usage). So develope a theory that would predict such a thing and test for it. If you don't find it then scrub that theory and try another. You can't just do some arbitrary experiment then work out a theory from the results as then the theory doesn't actually predict anything or help anyone.

For all those people who always pull out the "just because we haven't found it yet doesn't mean it isn't true" line I'll say "just because we haven't found it yet doesn't mean it is true, and if you can't tell me what it is that we haven't found and what it is that would make it true then I'm not going to waste my time believing in it."

Guys, this is the most horribly set up experiment ever. Take a moment to actually think about the sample size, and the methodology. People have been trying to prove this paranormal hogwash for 112 years, and over this time, every single experimenter has cheated to influence the results.

Many documented cases of the most striking and compelling examples of 'psychic' phenomena occur under conditions of high duress. Why do researchers fail to take notice of this? There's enough here to suggest that quiet, orderly labs are exactly the places one would NOT expect to encounter such phenomena. Conversely, countless studies have been carried out in labs - I remember reading recently that telepathy had finally proven itself in rigorous trials. Again, something else to be ignored.It's been notably suggested (yes, DECADES ago) that psychic ability itself can be suppressed by powerful 'negative' thought (ie. from disbelieving spectators). Well, at the risk of sounding pseudo-scientific, why not? We're clearly dealing with something that has defied attempts at study, yet has manifested itself since the beginning of human history.Maybe it's time to find another approach, one that can deal with these little quirks? Isn't that what real science is about?

I agree that this expirement is no where complete and lacking information which could convince some one who scruitinizes. The readers lack valuable information that would convince them this expirment is legit or not. The results seem inconclusive. And realy is there such a thing as morphic fields? If so why hasn't anyone seen one or an example of one been given.

I wrote the arguement above about more testing needing to be done and proposed my own idea about quantum connections which probably needs a lot of work as it is. An interesting thought though is that when a particle become entangeled with its partner they can be as far apart as you want and affecting one will affect the other. Dosn't that seem so suggest some sort of connection beyond our universe that we know of?

ok my bad morphic field link on the article to read about. Though still not sure what they are. Quantum connections between consciousness and other dimensions is probably not only my idea but I bet others have had the same as well.

- the experimenter chose specific times at which the emailers sent their email. The participant knew what these times were to be and emailed their guesses 1 minute in advance of each time.- the experimenter chose the emailer by role of a dice.

I think it is incredibly close minded of any scientist to look at telepathy with any sort of unfair scepticism. Being sceptical is a fantastic quality to have in view of a theoretical idea but only when used to investigate the theory objectively. If it is just used to slur and patronise the theory and those working on it, it is of no use to anyone.

I neither believe nor disbelieve in telepathy because nobody has given me any scientific evidence for or against it, either in practice nor theory.I don't understand why it is even up for discussion about whether its true or not if there's no way yet to prove either arguement. Why don't more people go out and test it, like good scientists do about every other crazy theory.. remember that one about gravity?

Given decades of poorly designed experiments with positive results, and well-designed experiments with null results, should we expect anything OTHER than approaching new results with skepticism? Scientists are too-often criticized for being closed-minded, when in fact it is long experience with charlatans that has hammered that door shut. Consider the whole thing from a Bayesian perspective... even if one started out with a credulous prior, how incredibly incredulous must our posteriors be by now?

By the way, anonymous dude above, the 100th monkey effect has been shown to have been fabricated (don't remember where I saw an exposition of this, perhaps one of Michael Shermer's books), and David Icke strongly believes that the world is run by a race of half-lizards. May I then be excused if I dismiss your DNA-as-transmitter-of-consciousness hypothesis out of hand?

If I had 4 friends to choose from, to receive an email, I would choose the one most likely to email me, the one I think most comfortable with using email... The one most likely to volunteer to send an email?Could that be a source of bias?

i'm inclined to not believe in telepathy, but the amount of times i have taken my phone out of my pocket only to have it ring seconds later, or be writing an sms to someone, or looking for a name in my numbers list, and then have that person call, coincidence just doesnt seem to cover it completely.

OK, enough with the "cellphone telepathy" theories. Yes, we've all had the feeling our cellphone will ring just seconds before it actually does.

But remember this (as anyone that has ever stood near a radio/landline/set of speakers will tell you): Before your phone actually rings, for a few seconds it is receiving info from the nearest cellphone tower and pumping out information/radiation by return.

You might hear some interference in your stereo speakers (a clicking noise) as it does this.

Since radiation from cellphones is known to heat your brain slightly (or your leg tissue, if stuffed in your pocket), you may subconsciously detect the slightest of tingles for a few seconds, BEFORE YOUR PHONE ACTUALLY RINGS.

Then the subconscious part of your brain (which makes many clever associations that it doesn't have to tell you about) gives you a hint that your phone is about to ring and then (BY GOLLY!) it rings.

"If I had 4 friends to choose from, to receive an email, I would choose the one most likely to email me, the one I think most comfortable with using email... The one most likely to volunteer to send an email?Could that be a source of bias?"

Quite possibly. What could easily skew things here is the reliability of the emailer. If you picked 4 friends to email you, chances are that some are more likely to respond promptly than others - if they respond at all.

So all you need is the guesser to pick the most likely to email (which they might well do subconciously because they would rate them as more likely to reply to emails based on experience).

The cases where the sender doesn't reply would correspond with the dice rolls that selected an emailer less likely to respond.

I suspect that including the cases where the emailer failed to reply would even things out.

Perhaps this would explain the phenomenem generally, because it's all too easy to forget the times we expect a call or email from X but nothing materializes. As long as we expect calls from people likely to call us (which is somewhat inevitable) we'll inevitably be right surprisingly often.

Why are people so eager to dismiss the notion of telepathy? What about spooky matter and string theory?

Why are people so afraid of? Why are they so defensive that they scoff at the idea that we may have a consciousness beyond our physical bodies?

Defensively writing off things we don't understand has gotten us into trouble throughout history. Look how we brandish people as irrational when they challenge the status quo. It can be dangerous, such as when people were scoffed at for disbelieving the EPA's (premature) green light on the health conditions around the WTC (and now New Orleans).

Give proper credit to your intuition, that "gut feeling," the eyes in the back of your head that might save your life, as many war veterans will tell you. Even Einstein said that imagination is more important than knowledge.

We humans are not rational beings, but I'm sure there's a rational explanation for the potential of telepathy.

I've read Sheldrake's books, including "The Sense of Being Started At." I agree with other posters here that there should be more studies on these matters rather than defensive dismissal.

Quite frankly research into paranormal and pseudo-scientific theories and beliefs rarely if ever make it through double blind testing intact, no matter how promising supposedly unbiased research may appear. That is enough to reinforce my skepticism.The most common weakness is human in nature, whether conscious or subconscious...

Basically, it doesn't take into account the bias that a recipient is likely to have towards those who will be more reliable remote email senders.

Some of the remote senders may not be so friendly with the receiver so may not make themselves available as a potential sender at the right time. The more friendly senders who the recipient is more likely to chose are more likely to be available at the right time for the sending of an email.

Relatively unfriendly senders who are randomly selected but aren't available at the right time will simply have their lack of participation recorded as an incorrectly performed test and their result will be discarded.

This will produce results that will be significantly above chance.

The experimenters really should have taken this possibility into consideration and should have ensured that ALL senders were available and prepared to send at the right time. If any one of the senders were not available (whether they are the actual sender or not) then the result should be discarded.

To test their hypothesis correctly, they will have to re-run the experiment again with the above restriction in place.

The emails were ALL able to respond at the appropriate time in this experiment. Once one of the 4 were picked to send an email by roll of a dice, they sent the email. If they did not send the email the trial was discounted. All trials where the participant received other emails in between (or oter telephone calls in between the telephone ivestigation) were also discounted.

A person less friendly to the receiver is less likely to be as cooperative in sending a message on time, and more likely to cause the test to fail.

A more friendly sender is more likely to send the required email on time using the correct procedure - thus more likely to have the test recorded.

Also, a receiver is more likely to choose the more friendly senders ( due to better friendships or other psychological effect).

For example, if the Receiver (R) chooses a friendly sender (Sf), but unfriendly sender (Su) is appointed by random selection as the actual sender, then there is a significantly greater chance that Su will invalidate the result (because he's not so cooperative and misses the deadline). In otherwords, what should have been counted as a negative hit, will instead be discarded as an invalid result.

If R chooses Sf and Sf becomes the appointed sender, then Sf will be more likely to perform the test correctly, and have that positive hit result validated.

To make it easier to understand, imagine the extreme situation where there is only one Sf and that that Sf will always perform the test correctly. Imagine also that all the other senders are Su that always fail to correctly perform the test.

Now, if R guesses Sf, and Sf is chosen as the appointed sender, then Sf will send the email on time and the result will be counted as a positive result.

Now, if R guesses Sf, and Su is chosen as the appointed sender, then Sf will invalidate the test and the test result will be discarded, even though it should have been counted as a negative result.

What should have been a counterbalancing negative result becomes instead a discarded result, thus incorrectly biasing the results towards positive results.

The point may be subtle but it is worth the effort of understanding. The effect is real, and enough to invalidate the experiment.

"As e-mails display the time they were sent as a standard feature, it was easy to establish that the guesses were in fact sent before the e-mails. "

Sigh. Emails go from investigator to sender and investigator to recipient. Then recipient sends their guess a mere one minute "earlier" than the sender sends theirs to the recip with a cc to the investigator.

Email header timestamps are assigned by the sending SMTP server. It is not that hard for one or more of those to be a couple of minutes off of the others. . . .

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